


it's nice to have a friend

by Shadowcrawler



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Birthday Fluff, F/F, Pre-Femslash, Skimmons Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:15:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26408578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowcrawler/pseuds/Shadowcrawler
Summary: Skye's made up her own birthday traditions.
Relationships: Jemma Simmons/Skye | Daisy Johnson
Comments: 5
Kudos: 47
Collections: Bioquake Week 2020





	it's nice to have a friend

**Author's Note:**

> For Bioquake/Skimmons Week day 1, "birthday." It's short and sweet and not anywhere near as ambitious as the rest of the ideas I had for this event, lol.
> 
> This is set in early-mid-s1, which is why she's still going by Skye and why she thinks of Jemma as "Simmons."
> 
> I will never be over the look on Daisy's face when she said she didn't know when her birthday was.

When the Bus lands in an unassuming suburb of Seattle, Skye takes the opportunity to slip away to the grocery store. 

It doesn’t take her that long to find a basic cake mix and some vegetable oil (the Bus always has eggs, because Ward insists on making stupidly fancy omelettes every weekend that make the whole Bus smell like eggs for hours). She spends a little longer looking at frosting, because Funfetti is, well, _fun_ , but there’s also a kind with rainbow chips already mixed into the frosting. Eventually the former wins out because it’s bright blue, and that seems better than regular white vanilla. 

She doesn’t get candles, because she never gets candles, but she does grab a pack of candy dinosaurs on toothpicks. 

Then she hustles back to the Bus. May, Ward, and Coulson are supposed to be gone for at least a few hours on recon (she was supposed to go too but faked sick, much to Ward’s annoyance), and FitzSimmons have been tied up in their lab since the day before working on those flying robots of theirs. Still, weird shit happens and she doesn’t want anyone wandering into the kitchen and asking nosy questions.

It’s been awhile since she’s had access to a kitchen to bake anything, but the instructions on the box seem easy enough. It’s not like the Bus kitchen is equipped for high-class cooking, but she finds measuring cups, a bowl, and a cake pan and gets to work. 

Everything is going fine until she gets to the part where she has to beat the eggs. “There has to be a damn mixer somewhere in here,” she mutters, pawing through every cupboard she can reach and trying to make as little noise as possible.

Which apparently wasn’t as successful as she thought, because the next time she turns around, Simmons is standing there. “Jesus Christ!” Skye says, literally jumping. 

“Hello, Skye,” Simmons says, looking a bit nervous. “I didn’t mean to startle you. What are you looking for?”

Skye looks guiltily at the bowl of cake mix, then at Simmons. “Uh, a mixer?” she says sheepishly.

“For what?” Then Simmons notices the bowl on the counter. “Are you baking? I thought you had a stomachache.”

“I…” Skye thinks fast. “Suddenly felt better?”

“I didn’t know you liked to bake.” Simmons furrows her brows. “What is it?”

“Oh, it’s just, uh, a box cake. I just...felt like it.”

“Well, I suppose it might help Ward be less angry that you skipped out on intel gathering if there’s cake,” Simmons points out with a laugh. “Or maybe not. I don’t know if he likes anything sweet, come to think of it.”

Skye snorts. “Please, that guy doesn’t even put any sugar in his coffee. It’s so nasty. No way he likes cake.”

“True.” Simmons smiles and then notices the can of frosting on the counter. “Ooh, is that Funfetti?”

“Yeah. I thought it was…uh, festive.”

“I suppose so.” Simmons comes over to look closer at it, which makes Skye a little nervous. “Oh, these are charming!” She picks up the little box of dinosaurs. “Did I miss a holiday somehow?”

“No, uh…” Skye opens another cupboard and pretends to be very focused on looking inside. “I just thought, uh, it’d be a nice thing to do for people.”

“Well, that’s very sweet.” Simmons goes over to another cupboard. “Would you like help looking for that mixer? I expect there’s one somewhere, it’s a fairly basic appliance.”

“Yeah, sure.” Maybe if she lets Simmons help look for the mixer, she won’t keep being nosy about what the cake’s for.

No such luck, unfortunately. As she’s looking, Simmons says cheerily, “I used to have a little day-by-day calender listing obscure holidays, and I tried to do something for the ones I liked. Did you know April 25th is World Penguin Day? I always liked that one best and tried to convince my parents to take us to the zoo. It only worked once, but they turned out to be having a special penguin show and it was all very exciting.” 

The mental image of tiny Simmons at the zoo, watching the penguins, is _very_ cute, and Skye can’t bring herself to be as annoyed as she was before. “Aw,” she says, moving on to another cupboard. “That sounds pretty fun. What about today?” 

“Today is…” Simmons pauses, as if she’s checking her watch. “March fourth. It’s National Grammar Day, I remember that because my dad used to find it very funny. ‘What’s the use of a day for grammar? What do they do, diagram special sentences that day?’ It was all quite silly.”

“Oh. Yeah, I didn’t know about that. It’s just ‘cause.” Skye reaches the last cupboard on her end and, upon finding nothing, sighs. “Any luck over there?”

“Not yet, but I’ve got a few more left.” Simmons opens the next cupboard and exclaims in delight. “Aha! Here you are.” She hands Skye a hand mixer (still in its box) triumphantly. 

“Oh! Thanks.” Skye plops it the box on the counter. “I guess I could’ve just mixed it myself with a spoon or whatever, but I haven’t, y’know, done this much.”

Simmons wrinkles her nose. “Baking, you mean?”

“Yeah. Y’know, not much of a kitchen in a van.” Skye means it in a joking way, but Simmons immediately looks embarrassed and horrified. “That was a joke,” Skye adds quickly. “But I haven’t baked anything in awhile, yeah.”

“I’m sorry,” Simmons says, still looking sheepish. “Do you, ah, want company? I can leave if you’d rather not.”

Suddenly the idea of doing this in an empty kitchen seems even more depressing. “I mean, I don’t want to keep you from important science stuff,” Skye says, trying to sound nonchalant. “Weren’t you guys working on those drone things?”

“Yes, but they’re mostly Fitz’s area of expertise. I stepped out for a drink - he was getting a little too in his own head about it all and I thought I’d give him a moment to cool off.” Simmons rolls her eyes a bit, which surprises Skye - aren’t they basically the same person? “So are the dinosaurs just for decoration?”

Skye coughs. “Yeah. They were just cute and I...like dinosaurs?”

“Oh, I do too. They’re fascinating, especially if you look into the biological end of things. Did you know that that whole hullabaloo about the stegosaurus having a second brain is most likely false? The current theory is that it either served as glycogen storage, some sort of balance organ, or nervous system support. Not quite as splashy, but interesting all the same.” 

She’s not about to let Simmons know she didn’t even know about the second brain thing, so instead she just says “Oh, that’s cool” and then turns the mixer on. 

Once the batter is mixed and poured into the pan, she realizes she hasn’t got an oven mitt. “Shit,” she mutters. “Simmons, did you see an oven mitt anywhere in here?”

“Actually, yes.” Simmons retrieves one from a drawer that Daisy definitely thought was a fake drawer and hands it to her. It’s extremely gaudy and has a picture of a fireworks show at Las Vegas, which throws Skye for a loop. 

“I wonder where this came from,” she says with a smirk as she slips it on and puts the cake in the oven. “Doesn’t exactly seem like AC’s style.” 

Simmons giggles. “It can’t be Ward’s. D’you think it’s Agent May’s?” 

“Oh my god. No way! It had to have come from a Goodwill or some random desk agent or something.” Skye sets the timer and then, feeling awkward, adds, “Uh, you can totally grab that drink if you want, I didn’t mean to waylay you.”

“Not at all. I’m having some water, would you like some?”

“Sure.” Skye goes over to flop on one of the lounge couches. “Thanks.”

Simmons brings two glasses over and sits on the other end of the couch. “So,” she says, looking a bit awkward again. “Are you...up to anything else today, besides baking a cake?”

Skye thinks fast. “I dunno, might go a few rounds with the sandbag. You?”

“Well, eventually Fitz will wonder where I’ve got to. And I was hoping to get some reading done later. I’m in the middle of a fascinating book about the history of evolution and how Darwin didn’t so much discover it as popularize it.”

“Oh,” Skye says. “That sounds, uh…” Probably it really _is_ fascinating to Simmons, but she kind of glazed over just during the short explanation. “Really cool.”

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Simmons gives her a strange look. “You’re acting strange.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m fine.”

Simmons frowns. “Are you sure this cake isn’t _for_ anything? It seems an awful lot of effort to go to for a cake, what with the fibbing to everyone and all.”

Skye hadn’t anticipated Simmons being quite so tenacious about this, and she’s running out of fucks to give. “Fine,” she sighs. “I’m making it for...my birthday. It’s stupid.”

“What?” Simmons’ entire face lights up in a mixture of surprise and delight. “Skye, I had no idea it was your birthday! I would’ve done something! Does Agent Coulson know?”

Oh god. Instant regret. “No, he doesn’t,” Skye says sheepishly. “It’s not...long story, but it’s not really my birthday.”

Simmons looks as if she’s just said she tortures kittens for fun and profit. “What do you mean?”

“It’s...okay, so I don’t know my actual birthday and when I was a kid I had this idea that I could just pick any day to be my birthday. So every year I’d pick a day, find a way to get some cash, and I’d go buy myself a cake and eat it and watch a movie and that’d be my birthday.” Skye shrugs. “Today just felt like a good day to be my birthday, I guess.”

“Oh.” Simmons still seems a bit startled, but she nods. “That makes sense, I suppose. Were you planning on eating that entire cake yourself?”

“I mean, I was gonna just take half and leave the other half in the fridge, to be honest. Who’d turn down free cake?” 

“Well, probably Ward, as we discussed earlier,” Simmons says with a mischievous smile. Then her expression softens. “So you’re going to just go off by yourself and eat cake and watch a movie, then?”

“That was the plan, yeah.” Skye can tell Simmons is similarly scandalized by this. She really should be more annoyed that Simmons got her to spill the beans so quickly, but...it’s kind of nice, having someone give a shit. “I guess you can join if you want, but the movie I was gonna watch is pretty dumb.”

“What is it?”

“ _Ever After_.” Skye feels embarrassed just admitting to it. “It’s this dumb Cinderella retelling with Drew Barrymore. I just like it, I dunno.”

“Oh, I quite like _Ever After_ too! It gets a bit ridiculous and it’s not at all historically accurate, of course, but it’s charming. I wouldn’t want to intrude, of course,” she adds quickly. “If you’d rather watch alone please do.”

Skye pauses. Her bunk’s not very big, but it might be sort of cozy to cram in there with Simmons and watch the movie together. It’s been awhile since she’s had anyone to cuddle with. Not to make it weird. Simmons doesn’t feel _that_ way about her, why would she? “No,” she says, before she can change her mind, “I’d like that. If you’d watch with me, I mean.”

Simmons’ whole face lights up, and dammit, she has a really cute smile. “Really?” 

“Yeah. Why not?” Skye smiles. “You can help me frost the cake too, if you want. One condition: I get to put the dinosaurs on.”

“Of course!”


End file.
